ADVENT DAY 19: DOROTHY & THE JOLLY OL’ GENT

SPOILER ALERT: The following may reveal controversial information about Santa Claus.

My mother (Dorothy) had a wonderful imagination. Fairies, elves, and Santa Claus were indulged at her house. But – truth and reality were also important to her. I don't remember ever believing that Santa was a person with a home at the North Pole. There was always a little doubt in my mind. So one day, when I was quite small, I asked Mother if Santa Claus was real. She answered me in very serious tones. "Santa Claus is the spirit of giving that lives in each one of us," she said. "And don't ever say there is no Santa Claus." We went round and round for a while until finally I got the picture: We were going to have a wonderful time believing in Santa Claus.

When I was a child, we did not hang our stockings for Santa. Instead, the stockings were laid out in the big bedroom upstairs, and elves would gather there to help fill them. I was still very small when Mother gave me some trinket that I was to put in a stocking. She took me by the hand and led me into the big room just cluttered with Christmas wrappings and ribbons. She showed me the right stocking and had me drop the trinket – whatever it was – into it. Years later she told me she had done that so I would understand how the stockings were stuffed even though we were pretending Santa Claus came.

One year Monica Nunan, my niece, pointed out that people are supposed to hang their empty stockings for Santa. She thought we should comply. Adults – and by that time I was one – were startled. How would we manage? Well, it worked out great. For years the "cousin group" would hang their stockings, then retire to the kitchen to write a letter to Santa and fill a plate with cookies for him. Then, they agreed to go upstairs to bed and stay there – but they mostly had a good time talking into the night. KW